I remember the first time I ever talked to my parents. That would also happen to be the first time I remember hearing their voice, though I later found this to be not true. Apparently, my mother had been sending me tapes she had recorded of herself, telling me how things were going for her in the States, reading me bedtime stories, singing me songs. I have no memory of these tapes, sadly, nor do I remember ever listening to them, from my youth. The first time I heard them was well after college when digging through some old stuff in my room at my mother’s house we happened upon them and I asked what they were. We listened to them. My mother sounded very young. But that’s a digression. The point is, even though I don’t remember it, I had heard at least my mother’s voice before my actual memory of hearing it for the first time. And what’s interesting about this memory of the first time is that I don’t actually remember what we talked about, what we said, nor the sound of her voice. I’m sure I would’ve remembered a voice like I heard in the tapes; she sounded very nice.
The let’s call it the first time then was over the phone. I was going to meet them for what I considered to be the very first time, very soon. Again, supposedly I had met my parents seeing as my mother didn’t leave for the US until I was around 4. I again, unfortunately, have no memories of her from before the age of six. So the let’s call it the first time I heard her voice was just before the let’s call it the first time I’d get to meet them. It was very late at night, for reasons I didn’t understand at the time but have no come to understand as due to the time difference. It was at least very late for a child of that age to still be up. I was told that the phone call I was about to make would be very expensive, and that I shouldn’t talk for too long, even though I would want to. I was very excited to be talking to these people who are my parents, so it was no difficulty for me to stay up that late. I watched the clock tick by, counting the minutes until some late hour in the evening. I’m not sure why we were waiting for on the hour but we were. When the time came, my grandparents dialed the phone for me, and I eagerly picked up the receiver.
As I said earlier, I have no recollection of what we talked about, what they sounded like, or my reaction to the conversation. All I do remember is that as we talked, my eyes were fixed on the clock on the wall. I was determined to keep the conversation to only one minute in length. I’m not sure why or how I decided on that interval, because I’m pretty sure I did not know that phone charges were by the minute. Perhaps it was just arbitrarily short. I deduce from this though that mostly what I did during the conversation was listen since I was counting down the seconds. When one minute had passed exactly, I hung up.
My grandparents must have called them back later because I remember hearing them laughing on the phone at how silly I was trying to keep the conversation to just one minute long.
I believe though that that was the last night I’d be in China. It makes sense in my mind that the night before my flight to the States would be the time for me to call my parents, in my mind for the first time. China flights to the States also happen mostly in the mornings because of how weird the time difference is; when you fly from China to the States you arrive on the same day, a couple of hours earlier, so it’s convenient to leave at like 11 in the morning because you’d arrive around 9 in the morning that day. I also make this assertion because I remember being tired on the flight because I hadn’t slept all night due to how excited I was. I had never flown before, and I was going to meet my parents in a whole new country. It makes sense then that I was up late first to call my parents, then up all night before my flight.
Edit:
I realize I’m skipping Day 10. As I was writing this I realized I have one more memory that happened before, but I was already mostly done with this one, and it’s late and I don’t want to write the other one, and I’m already messing around with the actual dates these things get written anyways so I figured what the heck, I’ll just write this one first. Speaking of which, I am messing around with what WordPress says is the date I wrote these; I like things to be neat so I’m putting them all in the appropriate order as if I had written one every day. It’s close enough :P
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